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Yuletide letter 2014
Oct. 19th, 2014 06:57 pmDear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you for signing up to be my writer. I am very excited about what you're going to write, I'm sure it will be great!
This letter is an expansion of my requests on the sign-up form - there's a list of general likes and dislikes, and the prompts are better structured and clearer. No surprises though, what I said on my request form goes.
As always, if you have a story you really want to tell, some spark of inspiration that's making your heart sing, then feel free to throw this out the window and write what you really want to write. And if, on the other hand, you're not feeling super inspired, don't worry. I'm sure I will love the story you create no matter what.
General Likes:
All kinds of stories, in all kinds of person and tense.
-No really, I'm down for anything. Be as weird and experimental as you want. I even like second person present tense. :p I like epistolary fic, I like pseudo-academic fic, I like fic that focuses on prose, fic that focuses on character, and fic that focuses on plot. Do whatever feels most comfortable, or whatever excites you most.
I like fluff and sad fic and fics that are a mix of both, or of many emotions. If happy is your style, go for that, but if you'd rather write something more melancholy that's fine too. The canons I've nominated this year have more than enough room for both. I do like for fluffy fic to have a measure of effort on the characters' part, and for dark fic to have a pinch of hope.
For most of these canons, I really love the worlds that they're set in, so fic that focuses on worldbuilding is always, always welcome.
AUs are great! I'd prefer canon-divergent AUs, but if you come up with something really bizarre and you want to try it out, go ahead. Though please try to keep the magical/sf aspects intact, because those are things I deeply enjoy in all of these canons.
I enjoy gen, ship-fic and smut. If you're writing smut for one of the canons with underage characters, please make sure they're all sixteen, or eighteen if it's sex with someone older.
General Dislikes:
No rape please.
Character death is OK, if you feel it's really necessary or if it's part of canon, but I would prefer if you left it out.
Gore is a big no. Amputation is a big squick for me, and loss of eyes, so please avoid describing that in any detail.
I generally hate seeing any character as the butt of jokes, or stories that exist to humiliate or demean one character. I chose these fandoms because I love the characters in them, and I want to see that continue into the fic. That doesn't mean that bad things can't happen to the characters - I just don't want the story to play favourites.
A fic that focused only on male characters would make me a bit sad.
Fandoms
Princess Tutu
What I like about it: the ballet music (hard to include in a story but still true :p). The meta-narratives and the way that different stories intertwine. The fact that the ending is compassionate to everyone, and gives everyone a chance at happiness. The way that the series is about accepting who you really are.
Princess Tutu is such a compelling show for me. I'm actually watching it again right now, and I've just been reminded over and over of how much I love it. I love the tone, I love the characters, and I love the message. I love the way it explores fairy tales, and the way it creates new ones out of old. I love that in the end, being a duck is as meaningful as being a swan.
Prompts:
Meta-narrative, stories within stories. By all means try something unusual or experimental, something I haven’t thought of. Mix genres, mix styles. What if another story intrudes on their lives, and it’s noir or science fiction or mystery or whatever?
I like pretty much every possible combination and pairing for this: Ahiru/Fakir, Mytho/Rue, OT4, Ahiru and Rue friendship or gen. If you want to go the sedoretu route then by all means do, because that is adorable, but if you want to explore the way these characters relate to each other as a more tangled knot, that's fine too.
Mytho and Rue’s relationship after the series ends. These guys are so messed up, and they have so much to work out, but I love how much they love each other. I want to see their happy ending, but I want to see them work at it.
A story Fakir wrote. Fakir’s feelings towards Ahiru. If you want to make her a girl, go ahead. You’re also free to leave her a duck if you prefer that. Ahiru's status has always caused great conflict for me, because her being a duck is the perfect ending, but I also want her to have the freedom and expression of a human body.
How Ahiru and Rue’s friendship endured after the end of the series. Ahiru and Rue are the best. They fight, but the friendship is always there underneath. I think it would be good and important for Rue to have someone who wasn't Mytho but still loved her in her life, and I think Ahiru values and treasures Rue in a really beautiful way.
Character pieces are also totally cool for this canon. If you just want to sit down and get inside a character's head, that is perfectly ok by me. :)
The Riddle-Master Trilogy
Things I like about this series: the prose. The prose is so beautiful. I love the melancholy tone of the series, and the sense of great ages of time that have passed through the world. I love the imagery. I love the characters, and their complicated, tense, loving relationships with each other. I love the magic in the series, and how it works.
One of the lines from any book that has stayed with me most is the quote in The Heir of Sea and Fire "not compassion, but passion". I thought that was such a great summary of how a villain might see the world. It made the Earth Masters alien and relatable in the same stroke. And the Riddle-Master trilogy is just full of lines like that. It has this sense of beauty and power that I've rarely found in other fantasy, and I love that McKillip manages it with very little that is unfamiliar. I could imagine all the lands she describes so clearly.
Prompts:
Raederle’s life through the centuries. Her place in the world/her role as a figure of power after the end of the book. Raederle and Morgon’s marriage: how they negotiate having a relationship that lasts for centuries. Raederle exploring the sea and coming to terms with her heritage as an Earth Master. Raederle is just super interesting. I love her internal conflict. I love that her power frightens her, and at the same time she finds it beautiful. I love her determination. If anyone was suited to Morgon, it's her, since they're just as stubborn as each other. When I first read the book, I found the ending sad, because they were going to spend so much time apart, but now I think that if you had millenia to live, living apart from your spouse would be the only way to make it work. I'd love to know how Raederle defines herself post-series. She goes through so many transformations: who does she become?
Tristran and her relationship with Lyra. She seemed to really admire Lyra and look up to her, and whether you wanted to take that as a friendship or a romance it would be really interesting. She’s not directly the land-heir of Hed, so her being in a relationship with a woman wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but it might be a problem for Lyra. How would they negotiate that?
Lyra becoming the Morgul of Herun in the future – the Morgul is a very stationary figure, someone who is quite still and passive, seeing and learning much, but not a fighter. This would be a big transition for Lyra, how does she handle it? I think of that moment when her eyes turn gold, and I just shiver. It would be a moment of such grief, because her mother would be dead, and yet it would also be a moment of great power for her. How would she deal with that? Who would she become?
Steven Universe
What I like about this show: The world is so interesting. There’s so much room for world-building and development. The characters are great and interesting and so much of them is hinted at but never explored. The show has a great tone which can swing back and forth between goofy and tender and sad and sweet very quickly, and I think that’s awesome. Also the gems’ powers are really cool.
Steven Universe is a kids show I wish I'd had as a kid. It has a very deft tone, and it juggles funny/sad/serious/poignant/goofy with real skill. It's a show I always go to when I'm feeling down, and it always cheers me up.
Prompts:
An original flavor story about Steven and the gems dealing with some silly random problem. There are so many absurd gem powers in the canon, so I think you could totally have fun with this. Feel free to let your imagination run wild, and include as many characters as you like.
A story about Steven trying to fix one of the gems they recover. How does he feel about the idea that somewhere inside, these monsters are sentient creatures? The episode where he tries to rescue the monster really touched me, and when you combine that with the idea that there's a sentient person in there, it's really compelling. I'd love to see that developed in a story.
What did Lapis find in space? If you wanted to use her to worldbuild and develop the concept of the gems some more, that would be great. Lapis is a great character in general. She's so strong and angry and not perfect, but she tries so hard. I love her for that.
Character studies in general are a really, really good bet for this fandom.
If we’re talking pairings then my pairing of choice is Garnet/Pearl. I think Pearl’s admiration of Garnet is super cute, and I would love to see a story where they finally merge: what is their combined gem like, and how does it reflect their attitudes to each other? (Or you can write curtain fic. Or smut. I would lap it up with a spoon.)
I really like Pearl in general actually, so if you also have an interest in her then something about her backstory would be really exciting. Or a backstory for all of the gems: how did they come to earth? What was it like when they first arrived? Or how about their experiences of the development of human civilization? Nothing says it took exactly the same route as in our world, so feel free to play around with that.
If you want to write about something sad, then you could look at the first few weeks/months after Rose Quartz died.
The Old Kingdom
What I like about it: the magic system is so interesting. The characters feel real and detailed and really alive. The zombies are incredibly creepy. The ancient creatures like Mogget and Kibeth are so intriguing and mysterious. The character relationships are really well done, and have a lot of complexity to explore. The magic is soooooo awesome.
I recently read Clariel (and by recently I mean just before I wrote this). It revived all my love for this amazing series. The world is so interesting, Mogget is so compelling, the characters are always so well-developed, and even though they make mistakes they're really fascinating to watch. I find the Dead really creepy, but I love the series, and I love that it balances horror with drama and action.
Prompts:
Lirael and Mogget, after the end. Especially their relationship to the Disreputable Dog, and how Mogget is the closest creature to Kibeth, even though Lirael didn’t like him much while Kibeth was with her. The Dog is not a nominated character, so if you’d rather not include her that’s fine, you can absolutely write a story about Lirael and Mogget in some other way – maybe they have to go deal with an outbreak of the Dead together?
Sabriel and Lirael, and how they learned to be sisters. I can't imagine being forty and finding out I had a twenty year old sister. For Lirael it's great, it's the family she always wanted and needed, but for Sabriel it must be a much more mixed emotion. Her father never told her about this sister, after all. That would have been quite the shock. And Sabriel is so blunt, and straightforward. She might find Lirael a little difficult to negotiate at first. I can just imagine them going off to hunt the Dead, struggling to deal with something horrible and also with each other at the same time.
Ellimere learning to be queen, and how she felt about the events of Abhorson. For all my talk of well-developed characters, I never got much of an impression of Ellimere, though I think she's someone very bound to duty. I'd love to read a fic that explores her perspective more deeply.
Lirael and Nick, back in the Old Kingdom after the events of The Creature in the Case. (Nick is not one of my nominated characters, so this is very much optional.) If you don't want to write about Nick, then by all means ignore this, but I do like their relationship, so I'd be interested to see your take on it. Nick would probably find adjusting to the Old Kingdom pretty hard, but I think he'd enjoy it too. I'd be interested to see how his scientist mind merges with Charter Magic.
Ava's Demon
What I like about this canon: they characters are all so cute. I love the kid/demon dynamics. I love the visual style – if you wanted to translate that into writing it would be amazing. I love the different personalities we get. I love the story itself, the whole conflict with and mystery around Titan. I’m really intrigued by the tension between the characters, their demon, the sin they represent (and perhaps also the virtue?).
I love webcomics in general, but Ava's Demon is one of my all-round favourites. I love the art, the music, and above all the story. This is a canon that's lush in every sense of the word, and above all it's lush with detail. No matter how much of the story is revealed in the comic, I think I'll always want more.
Prompts:
One very interesting option for this canon, I think, is a story quartet, where the personalities, childhoods, roles and development of the four kids is contrasted. How are they similar, how are they different? What moments of synchronicity were there in their early lives, what moments of difference?
In terms of pairings, I like Ava/Maggie, Ava/Odin and of course there’s always the fun OT4 option. Given that we currently have two boys and two girls a sedoretu AU could work excellently for them, with the added complication of demons. (You may have guessed from Princess Tutu and this that I love sedoretu fic. You are 100% correct.)
For Ava/Maggie I’d love something about their childhood, how they were close and grew apart, and how they might have felt about that shift. There's so much pain tangled and trapped between them, and though Maggie's anger and Ava's vulnerability prevent them from growing closer, it's obvious that they still need each other very much.
For Ava/Odin something cute and fluffy might be nice. Feel free to project into the future when they’re under slightly less pressure. Odin seems very sturdy and dependable, and yet he has his own vulnerabilities. I'd love to see a fic where he and Ava bring out the best in each other. Then there's the matter of Wrathia and Pedri. How interesting it is that they carry the souls of lovers. How would that change their relationship? Would it affect them for better or for worse?
The world of Ava’s Demon is intriguingly complex, so if you want to write a plotty story then by all means strand them on some remote planet and leave them to work out the flora and fauna for themselves. Feel free to tie it in to Titan as much or as little as you like.
None of the demons were nominated, and if you’d rather write an AU where they don’t exist then by all means go ahead, but if you want to include them then know that I am a huge fan of all the demons too.
Thank you for signing up to be my writer. I am very excited about what you're going to write, I'm sure it will be great!
This letter is an expansion of my requests on the sign-up form - there's a list of general likes and dislikes, and the prompts are better structured and clearer. No surprises though, what I said on my request form goes.
As always, if you have a story you really want to tell, some spark of inspiration that's making your heart sing, then feel free to throw this out the window and write what you really want to write. And if, on the other hand, you're not feeling super inspired, don't worry. I'm sure I will love the story you create no matter what.
General Likes:
All kinds of stories, in all kinds of person and tense.
-No really, I'm down for anything. Be as weird and experimental as you want. I even like second person present tense. :p I like epistolary fic, I like pseudo-academic fic, I like fic that focuses on prose, fic that focuses on character, and fic that focuses on plot. Do whatever feels most comfortable, or whatever excites you most.
I like fluff and sad fic and fics that are a mix of both, or of many emotions. If happy is your style, go for that, but if you'd rather write something more melancholy that's fine too. The canons I've nominated this year have more than enough room for both. I do like for fluffy fic to have a measure of effort on the characters' part, and for dark fic to have a pinch of hope.
For most of these canons, I really love the worlds that they're set in, so fic that focuses on worldbuilding is always, always welcome.
AUs are great! I'd prefer canon-divergent AUs, but if you come up with something really bizarre and you want to try it out, go ahead. Though please try to keep the magical/sf aspects intact, because those are things I deeply enjoy in all of these canons.
I enjoy gen, ship-fic and smut. If you're writing smut for one of the canons with underage characters, please make sure they're all sixteen, or eighteen if it's sex with someone older.
General Dislikes:
No rape please.
Character death is OK, if you feel it's really necessary or if it's part of canon, but I would prefer if you left it out.
Gore is a big no. Amputation is a big squick for me, and loss of eyes, so please avoid describing that in any detail.
I generally hate seeing any character as the butt of jokes, or stories that exist to humiliate or demean one character. I chose these fandoms because I love the characters in them, and I want to see that continue into the fic. That doesn't mean that bad things can't happen to the characters - I just don't want the story to play favourites.
A fic that focused only on male characters would make me a bit sad.
Fandoms
Princess Tutu
What I like about it: the ballet music (hard to include in a story but still true :p). The meta-narratives and the way that different stories intertwine. The fact that the ending is compassionate to everyone, and gives everyone a chance at happiness. The way that the series is about accepting who you really are.
Princess Tutu is such a compelling show for me. I'm actually watching it again right now, and I've just been reminded over and over of how much I love it. I love the tone, I love the characters, and I love the message. I love the way it explores fairy tales, and the way it creates new ones out of old. I love that in the end, being a duck is as meaningful as being a swan.
Prompts:
Meta-narrative, stories within stories. By all means try something unusual or experimental, something I haven’t thought of. Mix genres, mix styles. What if another story intrudes on their lives, and it’s noir or science fiction or mystery or whatever?
I like pretty much every possible combination and pairing for this: Ahiru/Fakir, Mytho/Rue, OT4, Ahiru and Rue friendship or gen. If you want to go the sedoretu route then by all means do, because that is adorable, but if you want to explore the way these characters relate to each other as a more tangled knot, that's fine too.
Mytho and Rue’s relationship after the series ends. These guys are so messed up, and they have so much to work out, but I love how much they love each other. I want to see their happy ending, but I want to see them work at it.
A story Fakir wrote. Fakir’s feelings towards Ahiru. If you want to make her a girl, go ahead. You’re also free to leave her a duck if you prefer that. Ahiru's status has always caused great conflict for me, because her being a duck is the perfect ending, but I also want her to have the freedom and expression of a human body.
How Ahiru and Rue’s friendship endured after the end of the series. Ahiru and Rue are the best. They fight, but the friendship is always there underneath. I think it would be good and important for Rue to have someone who wasn't Mytho but still loved her in her life, and I think Ahiru values and treasures Rue in a really beautiful way.
Character pieces are also totally cool for this canon. If you just want to sit down and get inside a character's head, that is perfectly ok by me. :)
The Riddle-Master Trilogy
Things I like about this series: the prose. The prose is so beautiful. I love the melancholy tone of the series, and the sense of great ages of time that have passed through the world. I love the imagery. I love the characters, and their complicated, tense, loving relationships with each other. I love the magic in the series, and how it works.
One of the lines from any book that has stayed with me most is the quote in The Heir of Sea and Fire "not compassion, but passion". I thought that was such a great summary of how a villain might see the world. It made the Earth Masters alien and relatable in the same stroke. And the Riddle-Master trilogy is just full of lines like that. It has this sense of beauty and power that I've rarely found in other fantasy, and I love that McKillip manages it with very little that is unfamiliar. I could imagine all the lands she describes so clearly.
Prompts:
Raederle’s life through the centuries. Her place in the world/her role as a figure of power after the end of the book. Raederle and Morgon’s marriage: how they negotiate having a relationship that lasts for centuries. Raederle exploring the sea and coming to terms with her heritage as an Earth Master. Raederle is just super interesting. I love her internal conflict. I love that her power frightens her, and at the same time she finds it beautiful. I love her determination. If anyone was suited to Morgon, it's her, since they're just as stubborn as each other. When I first read the book, I found the ending sad, because they were going to spend so much time apart, but now I think that if you had millenia to live, living apart from your spouse would be the only way to make it work. I'd love to know how Raederle defines herself post-series. She goes through so many transformations: who does she become?
Tristran and her relationship with Lyra. She seemed to really admire Lyra and look up to her, and whether you wanted to take that as a friendship or a romance it would be really interesting. She’s not directly the land-heir of Hed, so her being in a relationship with a woman wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but it might be a problem for Lyra. How would they negotiate that?
Lyra becoming the Morgul of Herun in the future – the Morgul is a very stationary figure, someone who is quite still and passive, seeing and learning much, but not a fighter. This would be a big transition for Lyra, how does she handle it? I think of that moment when her eyes turn gold, and I just shiver. It would be a moment of such grief, because her mother would be dead, and yet it would also be a moment of great power for her. How would she deal with that? Who would she become?
Steven Universe
What I like about this show: The world is so interesting. There’s so much room for world-building and development. The characters are great and interesting and so much of them is hinted at but never explored. The show has a great tone which can swing back and forth between goofy and tender and sad and sweet very quickly, and I think that’s awesome. Also the gems’ powers are really cool.
Steven Universe is a kids show I wish I'd had as a kid. It has a very deft tone, and it juggles funny/sad/serious/poignant/goofy with real skill. It's a show I always go to when I'm feeling down, and it always cheers me up.
Prompts:
An original flavor story about Steven and the gems dealing with some silly random problem. There are so many absurd gem powers in the canon, so I think you could totally have fun with this. Feel free to let your imagination run wild, and include as many characters as you like.
A story about Steven trying to fix one of the gems they recover. How does he feel about the idea that somewhere inside, these monsters are sentient creatures? The episode where he tries to rescue the monster really touched me, and when you combine that with the idea that there's a sentient person in there, it's really compelling. I'd love to see that developed in a story.
What did Lapis find in space? If you wanted to use her to worldbuild and develop the concept of the gems some more, that would be great. Lapis is a great character in general. She's so strong and angry and not perfect, but she tries so hard. I love her for that.
Character studies in general are a really, really good bet for this fandom.
If we’re talking pairings then my pairing of choice is Garnet/Pearl. I think Pearl’s admiration of Garnet is super cute, and I would love to see a story where they finally merge: what is their combined gem like, and how does it reflect their attitudes to each other? (Or you can write curtain fic. Or smut. I would lap it up with a spoon.)
I really like Pearl in general actually, so if you also have an interest in her then something about her backstory would be really exciting. Or a backstory for all of the gems: how did they come to earth? What was it like when they first arrived? Or how about their experiences of the development of human civilization? Nothing says it took exactly the same route as in our world, so feel free to play around with that.
If you want to write about something sad, then you could look at the first few weeks/months after Rose Quartz died.
The Old Kingdom
What I like about it: the magic system is so interesting. The characters feel real and detailed and really alive. The zombies are incredibly creepy. The ancient creatures like Mogget and Kibeth are so intriguing and mysterious. The character relationships are really well done, and have a lot of complexity to explore. The magic is soooooo awesome.
I recently read Clariel (and by recently I mean just before I wrote this). It revived all my love for this amazing series. The world is so interesting, Mogget is so compelling, the characters are always so well-developed, and even though they make mistakes they're really fascinating to watch. I find the Dead really creepy, but I love the series, and I love that it balances horror with drama and action.
Prompts:
Lirael and Mogget, after the end. Especially their relationship to the Disreputable Dog, and how Mogget is the closest creature to Kibeth, even though Lirael didn’t like him much while Kibeth was with her. The Dog is not a nominated character, so if you’d rather not include her that’s fine, you can absolutely write a story about Lirael and Mogget in some other way – maybe they have to go deal with an outbreak of the Dead together?
Sabriel and Lirael, and how they learned to be sisters. I can't imagine being forty and finding out I had a twenty year old sister. For Lirael it's great, it's the family she always wanted and needed, but for Sabriel it must be a much more mixed emotion. Her father never told her about this sister, after all. That would have been quite the shock. And Sabriel is so blunt, and straightforward. She might find Lirael a little difficult to negotiate at first. I can just imagine them going off to hunt the Dead, struggling to deal with something horrible and also with each other at the same time.
Ellimere learning to be queen, and how she felt about the events of Abhorson. For all my talk of well-developed characters, I never got much of an impression of Ellimere, though I think she's someone very bound to duty. I'd love to read a fic that explores her perspective more deeply.
Lirael and Nick, back in the Old Kingdom after the events of The Creature in the Case. (Nick is not one of my nominated characters, so this is very much optional.) If you don't want to write about Nick, then by all means ignore this, but I do like their relationship, so I'd be interested to see your take on it. Nick would probably find adjusting to the Old Kingdom pretty hard, but I think he'd enjoy it too. I'd be interested to see how his scientist mind merges with Charter Magic.
Ava's Demon
What I like about this canon: they characters are all so cute. I love the kid/demon dynamics. I love the visual style – if you wanted to translate that into writing it would be amazing. I love the different personalities we get. I love the story itself, the whole conflict with and mystery around Titan. I’m really intrigued by the tension between the characters, their demon, the sin they represent (and perhaps also the virtue?).
I love webcomics in general, but Ava's Demon is one of my all-round favourites. I love the art, the music, and above all the story. This is a canon that's lush in every sense of the word, and above all it's lush with detail. No matter how much of the story is revealed in the comic, I think I'll always want more.
Prompts:
One very interesting option for this canon, I think, is a story quartet, where the personalities, childhoods, roles and development of the four kids is contrasted. How are they similar, how are they different? What moments of synchronicity were there in their early lives, what moments of difference?
In terms of pairings, I like Ava/Maggie, Ava/Odin and of course there’s always the fun OT4 option. Given that we currently have two boys and two girls a sedoretu AU could work excellently for them, with the added complication of demons. (You may have guessed from Princess Tutu and this that I love sedoretu fic. You are 100% correct.)
For Ava/Maggie I’d love something about their childhood, how they were close and grew apart, and how they might have felt about that shift. There's so much pain tangled and trapped between them, and though Maggie's anger and Ava's vulnerability prevent them from growing closer, it's obvious that they still need each other very much.
For Ava/Odin something cute and fluffy might be nice. Feel free to project into the future when they’re under slightly less pressure. Odin seems very sturdy and dependable, and yet he has his own vulnerabilities. I'd love to see a fic where he and Ava bring out the best in each other. Then there's the matter of Wrathia and Pedri. How interesting it is that they carry the souls of lovers. How would that change their relationship? Would it affect them for better or for worse?
The world of Ava’s Demon is intriguingly complex, so if you want to write a plotty story then by all means strand them on some remote planet and leave them to work out the flora and fauna for themselves. Feel free to tie it in to Titan as much or as little as you like.
None of the demons were nominated, and if you’d rather write an AU where they don’t exist then by all means go ahead, but if you want to include them then know that I am a huge fan of all the demons too.
